Syrian palace official flees as battles rage in Aleppo

Syrian rebels said Thursday that a top official in the presidential palace had defected, the latest in a number of high-level officials abandoning embattled president Bashar Assad.

Members of the Free Syrian Army told Al-Arabiya that Assad’s chief of protocol Muhi al-Din Maslamani was in a safe place in Syria. They added that there would be more high-level defections in the coming days.

On Wednesday, former prime minister Riad Hijab was announced to have defected to Jordan.

The news of the defection came as rebels in Aleppo hunkered down against a renewed assault by government forces attempting to drive them from the northern city, Syria’s largest.

Helicopter gunships strafed several neighborhoods over the city as jets carried out bombing sorties, the BBC reported.

Syria had claimed to have pushed all the rebels out of the contested Salaheddine neighborhood Wednesday, but rebels rebuffed those claims, saying they had launched a counterattack and were once again in control of the district.

The 18-month conflict has killed tens of thousands of Syrians and sent some 250,000 fleeing the country.

On Thursday, a team of French military doctors said they were heading to the Syria-Jordan border to set up a mobile hospital to treat refugees fleeing the Syrian violence by the thousands.

Col. Gerard Dosseh, an anesthesiologist heading up the mission, said Thursday that the medics aim to be operative by the end of the week and to perform up to 10 surgeries a day on those wounded in the fighting.

About 25 medical personnel in uniform flew out Thursday morning. They will take about 20 tons of medical equipment to Amman, Jordan, and then to a site a few dozen kilometers from the border.

France, Syria’s onetime colonial ruler, has been in the forefront of diplomatic efforts to end the fighting.